#12 - Our Minds in Motion
A Curiosity Problem; Enter the Are.na; Yes, I Watched Sanctuary
Hello, my friends,
I’m relieved that no one responded to last week’s essay by insisting on what some people write to their friends in yearbooks: “Never change!” I’m changing, you’re changing, whoa! We’re in this together. I often think about the first verse from The Book of the Living I, a religious text that originated in and derived from Octavia Butler’s novels Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents:
1. God is Change
All that you touch
You Change.
All that you Change
Changes you.
The only lasting truth
Is Change.
God
Is Change.
∞ = Δ
A Curiosity Problem
In one of my online profiles it says that “curiosity is my superpower” which is true, but it’s also a problem. You see, I’m interested in a lot of stuff, but not all at the same time. That means, for example, my years-long interest in Buddhism comes in roughly 2-3 month spurts but those intervals might be six months or a year apart. For those months I’ll read multiple books about Buddhism, create notes for myself, look for local groups, maybe meditate, and then suddenly, for reasons unknown to me I’ll be unbolted. Which is to say, the lightning bolt will hit me in reverse, and I’ll immediately move on to something else with only occasional thoughts landing on the Buddha until next time.
Right now, I’m into finance (general and personal), non-profit leadership (I just finished the invigorating book Fifty Years in Public Causes: Stories From a Road Less Traveled by Brian O’Connell), public relations, working around the edges of Judaism, and fiddling with the personal knowledge management (PKM) app, Obsidian. I also have a book on C# on my bedside cabinet just because. All of these represent figments of larger subjects with which I have long-standing affinities in one way or another. What will I move on to next? Heaven only knows.
I’ve often wondered dolefully what it would feel like to be into something for an extended period (years?), to be devoted to that single thing. Wouldn’t it be lovely for a brain that is calm instead of kinetic, restlessly roving? Will I ever attain that? I’d like to keep my options open, stay optimistic — maybe I’ll settle down, join a monastery or a minyan. So I ask: This far into life, is the right move to accept that my commitment will never be to one subject, but to being a jack of all trades, a renaissance man, a fox?
Enter the Are.na
Social media gets a lot of negative attention these days from people who feel bad about their doom-scrolling. I’ve been there, too. These days, I lurk on Hacker News, actively post on Facebook (mostly in groups), occasionally participate in LinkedIn, and peacefully cultivate my Are.na channels. Are.na? It’s a cross between Craigslist and Pinterest, but quieter. It consists of your profile where you create channels and fill them with blocks. Blocks are text, a website, or an image. You can follow other people’s accounts or individual channels and whenever either of those are updated the new addition goes into your feed immediately with no mysterious algorithm deciding what you see. You can collaborate on channels with other people or keep them totally private, and there’s a group feature which I’ve never used. There’s also the “Explore” link which literally shows you all of the public blocks posted at that moment (again, no algorithm).
I enjoy Are.na because of it’s minimalist aesthetic, including that there are no ads at all, and its low-pressure approach — it’s a social network for introverts! Mostly, though, I like it because of the serendipity. Every time I open Are.na, I encounter books, apps, people, ideas I’ve never heard of! Because the target audience — and seemingly the majority of users — are designers and I am most definitely not a designer (though I’ve done design work (see “jack of all trades” above)), it’s like being in a room with people speaking their own special language. But instead of being awkward, there’s space to observe and learn. Also, it’s been around for nearly ten years — like a hundred years in internet time — so I’m not worried about it shutting down.
If you want to connect with me there, you can follow my profile or channels ( https://www.are.na/oleg-kagan) but note, you won’t be able to talk directly with me unless we collaborate on a channel because there’s no messaging system! It’s the ultimate in low pressure social! Perhaps we can call it…Slowcial media???????
Moving on…
Yes, I Watched Sanctuary
If you follow Netflix shows, you may have seen a new show pop up recently. It’s called Sanctuary and it’s about sumo. A sumo show on Netflix, what! It’s a limited series that follows the fictional Kiyoshi Oze (sumo name: Enno), a young, talented buffoon who joins the notoriously strict and insular world of professional sumo. Parts of the show are hard to watch with its violence and hazing, on top of Oze’s bad behavior. It also spares no one in exhibiting sumo’s backroom antics, the kind of stuff sumo fans only discuss in whispers.
Sanctuary’s arc is very much shaped like a wave, with most of the eight episodes serving as setup for a turn very near the end. Such a dynamic requires an especially strong finish, and I don’t believe this show meets the mark. Despite that, sumo fans and those who enjoy sports drama will find Sanctuary satisfactory. Most others will likely quit after one or two episodes.
Coincidentally, the May Grand Sumo tournament started last Sunday and is proceeding swimmingly. Yokozuna Terunofuji (who I wrote about in #2) is back and undefeated so far, Kiribayama needs ten wins to become an Ozeki (the second highest rank) and he might just get them, and the 21-year-old giant Hokuseihō started his second tournament at the highest level by winning a couple matches one-handed! As always, the drama builds in the second week, so it’s a good a time as any to start watching. For beginners I recommend the 30-minute daily highlights from NHK World where you get very helpful English commentary. Let me know if you watch and we can talk sumo!
I agree with Karen's comment. Curiousity is a feature, not a bug. ElizabethGilbert points out that if you haven't found your passion, curiousity is a good place to look for it. And she also points out that if you never find your passion -- the thing you can concentrate on to the exclusion of all other temptations -- then having lived a life of curiousity is not a bad alternative.
Having spent most of my life agonizing over not being able to choose one thing, I've had a pretty great and interesting life as a result of the searching.
Still... and having a few things that have stuck with me through it all, and now hopefully and increasingly feeling that I have finallly found the Intellectual True Love of My Life, I'm also aware of what I read once -- I think it was in one of those "10,0000 hour" books that were popular for a bit -- that to an expert, novelty is in the mastery of extreme detail. And that's the kind of focus that I really love, even beyond what I call "raccoon syndrome" ie, being tempted by the next shiny object. There is something very like meditation or prayer to me, to be lose myself in a nuance that would be of no interest or comprehension to someone who was just dabbling in the subject area. I do that increasingly these days and I find it so much richer than the Dabble.
But that said, I end where I began. I only found my true love by doing A LOT of speed (and not so speed) dating...
Regarding your wide-reaching curiosity, I don’t see it as a bug, but as a feature. It tells me you’re interested in life and that you’re an interesting person to be around. That’s a win in my book.
My interests wax and wane for a variety of reasons and I don’t let that cycle get me down. That cycling is part of life, and I don’t think you should worry about it either. Children cycle through interests all the time and we adults encourage it. I don’t see why, as adults, we can’t wildly pursue interests that way too. Who says we must dedicate ourselves to one interest for an extended period? Is it because it’s the adult thing to do? Nonsense.